


Lay Yourself Down To Sleep

by Eternal_Love_Song



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Canonical Character Death, Doomed Timelines, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 16:02:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5546459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eternal_Love_Song/pseuds/Eternal_Love_Song
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It began with Loki. Dangling over an edge.</p><p>A thousand times she does this, knows she does this. A thousand times she does not.</p><p>Time is not stagnant, not even for one that perceives it as does Death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lay Yourself Down To Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Just a piece of introspection that was floating about my head.

Time was not linear.

It moved in ways most could not comprehend. Not forward, but backwards, not in lines but in loops. It flowed freely in as many ways as it pleased and sometimes it swept others up in it’s wake. It moved a millions ways simultaneously, a million times, creating it’s own pockets and bubbles, inconsistencies and deviations. It danced, and the results were the melody that the world believed it moved to.

At times it weaved in such a way that everything seemed to be perfectly in tune with the best outcomes possible. But, there were other times…

It began with Loki. Dangling over an edge. There was a yawning abyss below him and yelling above. Looking up he could see desperate eyes, a stretching hand, kinship. For a while, he was desperate, too. His brother yelled above him, pleaded, needed to reach Loki and Loki wanted nothing more than to reach back.

But there was another gaze, one more eye. That eye was cold, stern, judging, displeased. His father’s very gaze was telling Loki ‘no.’

Do not reach for your brother’s hand.

Do not come back here.

You have overstayed your welcome.

There is no place for you.

“No, Loki.”

There was a yawning abyss below him. In that space Death opened her arms, beckoned. She sang promises of relief, of peace, of silence and song, and all he could hear was the loud echo of a vacuum. The scream of nothing from her, intermittently pierced by Thor’s wailing.

Loki wanted to see his brother one more time. He looked at those desperate eyes and he let Thor have it. For once, Loki let Thor take all the worry for his own. All the desperation, all the wanting, desire itself, he let Thor have it. Loki looked at his brother, wished for nothing, and he let go.

Death embraced him when he fell. Cold, silence, soft, END, coiled around him. Time and space bent around him and his choice, around Death and her opportunistic appearance and wanting of him; around and around and endlessly spinning, looping, creating and destroying. It coiled, Death embraced.

Loki breathed in the vacuum.

He breathed out nothing.

* * *

In another place, in another time, a god walked in mortal skin. Having gained the love of a woman, having the rally of friends, having the strength of heart that had always seemed to guide him, he thought himself invincible.

Death saw him walking to face his doom, saw him stand before destruction, and she waited. Where she could have passed him by and left him to chance, to luck, to time to see to his demise or skirt around it, she waited. She chose.

Thor looked in the face of The Destroyer with fear and confidence of nearly equal levels. Nearly, because Thor never really believed in his own death and centuries had taught him that he was immortal. He, of any of the gods, could not be bested. Thor, of all the gods, was immortal on the battlefield.

But he was without his greatest weapon, without his greatest shield, outside of his own skin. Thor looked the Destroyer in the face, with no Mjolnir to throw, no immortality in his bones, no Loki at his back. The Destroyer struck… and Thor fell.

He lay nearly unseeing on the ground, wondering how he could have fallen. He is a man that has learned nothing. His hand itches for a weapon that has centuries been a companion. His heart aches for a sibling that has been such for even longer. He wishes he could feel himself in his own skin one more time…

But he doesn’t. He can’t. He is a man without the blessings of a god.

Death admires him as he falls. Admires him as she moves closer. He is a handsome catch, strong and brave, a hero. He is worth thirty lesser men; perhaps more, had he died as he lived, with heart and skin of steel.

Instead, he is a man that died as nothing. With nothing. For nothing.

Thor closes his eyes.

Regrets.

Dies.

* * *

There is a man that is like a god. He walks the Earth like there are kisses placed on his feet at his every step. Confident, strong, believing himself infallible at times and pretending it at others.

Death has haunted his steps a thousand times, a thousand ways, and so often falls just so of claiming him. A blink, a pause, a moment's hesitation, and he yet lives. She feels herself take him a thousand times.

She meets him as she met a god in space.

He is overconfidence, but not in this. He does the one thing she’s never known him to do and puts himself on the line, not for his own sake, but another’s. But for millions of others. He elevates his life by sacrificing it for a million times his own. He makes himself unbearably desirable.

She waits for him, opens her arms to receive him as she once did another god.

She does not have long to wait. He holds tightly to his demise the entire way. He could let go. He could pull back in the last moment. But he doesn’t. He is tired, she knows. Fighting her off, even if it is not something that is actually possible and merely an illusion brought on by near misses she could undo if she chose to, have made him weary.

This mortal, breakable and small, yet too big for his own soul, flies into space. He releases his burden and watches as it continues away from him. She watches as his opportunity for escape closes behind him.

He’s so close to her she can taste him, taste the cold seeping into his skin, taste the slowing of his heartbeat, taste his death.

He closes his eyes; She closes her arms.

* * *

She meets him as the Valkyrie do the slain, in the midst of a battle before he knows that he can fight. He’s worth less this way, selfish and soft and worth only his own impression of himself, but she takes him anyway.

He meets his hubris in the form of his own brilliance, dread filling him up as the shrapnel from his own missile does the same.

She does not stop for this version of him.

He falls. He stares at the sky. He feels his heart dying and wonders how he could fall like this.

He does not think of hubris and irony. He does not lament. He has no regrets. Only disbelief.

Death passes him by, sweeps him up, carries him along.

* * *

She meets him as a monster does a child. He sits alone in the dark, scared, cradling the only comfort he’s ever known. The amber liquid no longer warms him when he swallows. He’s so cold that he no longer feels it and he takes that for what it is.

The blue lines map out his demise in pretty paintings along his skin. He glows, making him one of the prettier, more interesting that she has collected. He’s bound for Hel, the way he waits and fears his own death, but she does not plan to allow that.

She sits beside him. It is almost the end. He’s trembling so hard that he cannot continue to hold the glass. He bids goodbye to his bodiless companion. He bids goodbye to people he distanced himself from when he knew of his coming demise.

He bids goodbye to himself, disbeliever that he is that there is anything more.

She is patient with it all.

Another moment and he closes his eyes.

Another moment and he falls sideways into her arms.

Another moment as she claims him as she has the others.

* * *

Death kisses him as he chokes on water in a cave.

Death kisses him as his false heart is plucked from his chest by a betrayer.

Death kisses him as his home collapses in around him.

Some deaths he is worth more than others. Some deaths are better than others. Some deaths, Tony Stark is not worth the energy it takes to glance his way as he poisons himself with drink and danger. Some deaths, she passes him by entirely and does not look back.

Regardless whether he dies as hero or as once did a god, he dies alone.

Always alone.

* * *

Alone, a young girl waste away in the streets of Russia.

Death cradles her like a mother does a child, savors her dying.

This is one that will honor Death, bare it like a banner, in any time that she lives. 

* * *

Alone, a man makes the call to be a hero.

Like a man who thought himself god and shot toward the sky, this one respects his mortality so strongly he shoots himself at the ground, looking for a grave.

Death waits beneath the water, where she knows he will be.

This man is a hero no matter when he dies. He is not a favorite of hers. He does not serve her half as well as the gods nor the man that believed himself to be one. He does not serve her half as well as the woman that believes herself a devil when she kills for one cause and then another.

But he is a hero and Death enjoys a hero’s demise.

He is almost too preoccupied with goodbyes to pay fair attention to his own death. But eventually he can no longer speak and so is forced to take notice. The icy water surrounds him more quickly than he is prepared for, becomes unbearable too fast.

Sometimes, he is too stubborn to relent here. Sometimes, he is too well built to deconstruct on a dime.

But this is not one of those times.

Steve Rogers is too grieved in this moment, too willing, to fight what is so obviously becoming of him. He practically invites her to take him when he closes his eyes.

His death taste bland, despite the trappings of it. His bravery would battle with his willingness to die, leaving him stranded between Valhalla and Hel if she were not here to take him herself.

Death takes him, but she does not enjoy it.

Still, she would be discontent to let him live simply because she did not enjoy his Death. Too often he lives when she is not willing to take him and there is no good place for it. He is a hero, but that is all he is to her and it sours rather than savors.

* * *

Alone, a woman is ravaged by a beast.

Death watches as the beast destroys one of her favorites, destroys everyone around, destroys himself, and she savors.

Even as she ends, the woman brings Death more still.

There is nothing physical for Death to take, but she leaves with the woman regardless.

She leaves the beast. She does not want him. He belongs where he will always destroy and so she always leaves him.

* * *

Death takes the archer with a bullet in his head and hope in his heart.

He had words of kindness on his tongue, but he died with half of them still lodged in his throat.

Death watches as her favorite stares at him with cold, dead eyes. The woman’s actions here mean little in the grand scheme. The woman will kill one way or another, perhaps more without the interference of this archer, but it is always hard to tell with her flame haired banner runner.

The archer dies as he always does, as a divergence, a test, a road marker. Picking up his body is like a thousand other times.

It could be the end of a spear, the careless swing of a hammer, a fall in the middle of an alien invasion, or a million different times by the hands of a Black Widow.

The archer holds the weight of many when he lives.

He holds the weight of nothing when he dies.

* * *

A thousand times she does this, knows she does this. A thousand times she does not.

Time is not stagnant, not even for one that perceives it as does Death.

Sometimes she opens her arms, waits in the abyss of space, at the bottom of the ocean, on the heels of a flame haired assassin, and waits for the heroes to lay themselves down to sleep.

Other times, she watches a god dangle over an abyss and she opens a door. Opens all the doors, perhaps, as one single instance of life and death changes the entire production, and she waits. She watches.

A god falls.

And a Titan rises.


End file.
